Hackney Community College Falkirk Street,
Hackney London N1 6HQ.
15th February 2018 at 3.30pm – 5pm

The event has been created to explore the views of young people against a backdrop of rising knife crime, young people feeling over policed and under protected and their concerns about impacts of targeted operations on young people.

Voyage wishes to host this event to explore the views of young people on current police practice/ operations and hopefully move this towards an ongoing yet highly structured dialogue at high levels within the Police service. It is hoped from the question time we develop the dialogue into thematic strands that will open up into more regularized and more structured engagement and dialogue with the Met Police.

We envisage this will lead onto young people engaged and consulted sustainably through the:

• shaping of policing and community safety practice, procedures and policies
• strengthening of community trust and confidence in the Met Police
• building effective and long term bridges between young people at the Police

The event has already secured the participation from a mix of Hackney Police officers, Operation Trident, the Met Black Police association, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services and specialist teams including Taser/ fire arms and spot hood officers.

The Youth Question Time will attract up to 75 young people that are part of Voyages current education programmes and will be opened up to our local partners. The event will be chaired by Duane Maddison (aka Amen Noir) to ensure there is a structure to the afternoon, everyone gets a chance to speak and take questions from the floor.

We are hoping to drill into some of the issues and concerns that are raised at the Question Time event and follow this up with a report, actions and next steps.

empower |emˈpou(-ə)r|

verb [ with obj. and infinitive ]
give (someone) the authority or power to do something:
[ with obj. ] make (someone) stronger and more confident, esp. in controlling their life and claiming their rights.